As lead singer of the youthful Manchester band The 1975, Matthew Healy has cranked out a batch of enjoyably wiry songs, most notably the singles "Chocolate" and "Sex" — each of which has attracted more than a million YouTube plays. The group has been bubbling up, here and in the U.K., for the last year or two, as it's toured with Muse and released an album and four EPs full of brash-but-winsome, electronics-tinged pop-rock.

So The 1975 knows its way around bigness. But, when asked to strip his band's sound down to fit the intimate confines of the Tiny Desk, Healy didn't hesitate to transform both his songs and himself. Performing solo with a guitar — he even goes fully acoustic for his two hits — he's reborn as an earnest troubadour, while his songs now register as melancholy musings. They're remarkably sturdy in any form, as this bit of left-field sweetness amply demonstrates.